New Platform to Unify the Student-Led Zero Waste Movement

Hitting zero waste on a college campus is a big undertaking, but one organization wants to make it easier. The Post-Landfill Action Network (PLAN), based at the University of New Hampshire, was created to “help build student-led, self-sustaining waste-reduction programs at universities nationwide.” They’re now crowdfunding a platform to make sharing zero waste resources easier.

By creating a searchable, crowd-sourced database, PLAN can facilitate collaboration between students, staff, organizers, and zero waste activists. Through a public forum for questions, PLAN will reduce redundancies in educating other schools. As the website states, “There is no need for campuses to reinvent the wheel!”

The platform will provide the following basic functions:

A collaborative discussion board broken up into specific projects and programs. Through this discussion board any individual (students, administration, etc.) can create a free account to access and participate in the conversations, and upload/download resources at any time.

Documents will be uploadable and downloadable for free.

All discussion boards and uploads will be tagged with searchable keywords (ex: “composting”, or “procurement policies”) which will organize content in a navigable library.

With 10 days to go, PLAN’s crowdfunding campaign has raised over $6,800 of their $10,000 goal for the new platform. For incentives, they’ve partnered with goods sharing app Yerdle, which is offering one Yerdle dollar for every dollar donated to the campaign.

The big picture vision for PLAN is to create campus models that spread the zero waste message.

“Our goal,” the campaign page states, “is to create zero waste campuses that lead the way to a zero waste world where landfills and incinerators are obsolete.”

Cat Johnson is a writer and content strategist focused on coworking, collaboration and community. She's the author of Coworking Out Loud, a guide to content marketing for coworking space operators. Publications include Yes!

Cat Johnson is a writer and content strategist focused on coworking, collaboration and community. She's the author of Coworking Out Loud, a guide to content marketing for coworking space operators.Publications include Yes! Magazine, Utne Reader, GOOD, Shareable, Triple Pundit, Mother Jones, Future Perfect and Lifehacker.Cat helps coworking spaces and collaborative organizations tell their stories, amplify their message and grow their communities.See more on her coworking blog.Follow Cat on Twitter: @CatJohnson

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